A known food pusher has a circular pusher wall for pushing food down towards a work surface of a mandoline, a bias being provided for biasing the wall down towards the work surface. The food pusher may be guided relative to the work surface by a food holder for sliding the food pusher along above the work surface of the mandoline. This arrangement is effective in many situations but it is difficult to use the food pusher to work on long food, such as carrots or cucumbers.
A further known system has a food pusher which is rotatable relative to a food holder for guidably sliding the food pusher along relative to a mandoline work surface. The food pusher is rotatable relative to the holder and includes a small vertical circular through-bore such that some vertical food, such as relatively thin asparagus or thin carrots, may be guided along the work surface of the mandoline by the food pusher. However, the circular through-bore is only able to have a diameter of about 4 cm and there are many foods such as large carrots, cucumber or courgettes which cannot easily be processed. The present inventors have thought of simply scaling up this design, but this would have the disadvantages of extra size and cost of the whole arrangement including the mandoline. There is also a difficulty that the user needs particular care in using the arrangement not to squash relatively delicate foods such as tomatoes and strawberries which may require slicing by the mandoline.
The present invention aims to alleviate at least to a certain extent at least one of the problems of the prior art. Alternatively, the present invention aims to provide a useful food pusher, food holder system incorporating a food pusher and/or mandoline.